> However, the OTHER kind of Nanotech that people are thinking of are
> 'assemblers' and 'universal assemblers' - the teeny-tiny robots that
> would assemble things an atom at a time.
>
> It's not clear that these things are even possible - the nanotechnologists
> are about evenly divided about that.

It's got to be possible - we have an existence proof: this planet has been
knee-deep in self-assembling self-reproducing nanomachines for 3.5 billion
years. Indeed, our knees are made from them...